Thank you all for contributing to this thread with so little flaming getting in the way of discussion. I'm very surprised at that, even more so than seeing 75+ posts when I logged in 18 hrs after starting this thread
. All I can say is, thank the Dark Gods for booze at Cons
.
Anyway, I've just read everything so far. The balance of opinion seems to be that making field captures somewhat more difficult is better, although there are certainly votes for making it easier.
Personally, I don't think making things easier is better. Things have gotten harder over time for a reason. IIRC, the main reason was that a few folks in non-peak hours would milkrun beaucoup easy captures, so that when peak hours arrived, a bunch folks (usually Bz in AW, Golds in WB, and Rooks in AH) always found themselves about to be reset with their strat permanently porked.
In this regard, Toad brought up the fact that the trend towards harder captures tends to demonstrate that the whole capture-everything, RTS-type game model is a failure. My nostalgic side tends to agree. I, at least, engage in capture attempts not so much because I really want to, but because it's either that or be driven off the map. Reset the nme bastiges before they reset you is the law of the jungle. But the alternative is something like DOS AW, where only 3 of the 30 or so fields were capturable at all. That made for great furballs but nothing much else. While I liked those huge, unending furballs, I also like a bit of variety, and I also believe that a game needs to cater to other tastes to survive. So I'm willing to accept the conquer-the-world model and porking, etc.
Anyway, there seems to be a lot of votes for having more/harder VHs, more mannable acks especially at the town, and larger/harder towns would improve things. Maybe some GV spawns closer to town. IOW, the basic system seems OK, but could use some tweaks in light of present-day realities. That's what I've been thinking myself, so I'll now feel free to add such features to maps in the future. That pretty much answers the questions I had when I started this thread
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On the related topic of porking fields, Kweassa, seconded by a number of others, brought up the issue of kamikaze porkers. I'm with you all in detesting such dweebs, and agree that they're the logical alternative to being skillful and organized. The problem is that map-makers can't make the systemic changes to perks and stuff that Kweassa suggested.
As for Toad's questions of which came first, the harder buffing and captures or the kamikaze buffs and jabos, I have to say it was the attempts to make things harder. Sure, they existed before, but not in the numbers they have since, for the reasons Kweassa stated. So, if I make a map with multiple VHs per field and mannable acks at bigger towns, would this increase the number of kamikazes? I'm of the opinion that it would.
So it seems that besides making fields a bit harder to capture, we also want fields that are harder to pork. AFAIK, map-makers can't change the downtime of strat objects. Thus, the only ways to limit the effectiveness, and thus the attractiveness, of kamikaze attacks is to increase the number of field strats and/or make them harder to kill. IOW, make it require a major effort to pork a field. No more 3-4 lone kamikazes killing all the barracks on the whole front. No more "human V-1s" each taking fuel down 25% or more.
This would all tend to increase the concentration of pilots. This would make lone wolfing harder, but that really went out in 1917 anyway so I don't consider that much of a loss. It MIGHT tend to increase the severity and duration of furballs at fields, which would satisfy that crowd if they could learn to follow the herd instead of trying to sit at the same field all night. But on the large maps, would this concentrated attacking mass actually encounter any resistence? Or could the greater number of VHs and mannable acks at a field stymy the milkrunning landgrabbers long enough for reinforcing defenders to arrive?
I look forward to continued debate
